


Blue on Blue

by secretsoup



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crushes, F/F, First Kisses, Second Person Perspective, canon-typical sadness, impending betrayal, physical intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:52:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsoup/pseuds/secretsoup
Summary: It’s the second to last sleepover you’ll ever have with your best friend Lena, but you don't know that yet.You’ve hosted about a dozen of them by now, so you're practically an expert. You know all Lena’s favorite snacks, you always find the perfect scary movie to watch, and you've only been in real mortal peril like, three times, tops, which is the perfect amount. Just enough to keep things interesting.You are the BEST at sleepovers.Lena stays over a lot, so she must really think so too.





	Blue on Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry.

_It’s the second to last sleepover you’ll ever have with your best friend Lena, but you don't know that yet._

_You’ve hosted about a dozen of them by now, so you're practically an expert. You know all Lena’s favorite snacks, you always find the perfect scary movie to watch, and you've only been in real mortal peril like,_ _three_ _times, **tops** , which is the perfect amount. Just enough to keep things interesting. _

_You are the_ **_best_ ** _at sleepovers._

 _Lena stays over a lot, so she must really think so too_.

  
  


You wake up in the middle of the night.

The darkness in your bedroom is nearly absolute. You kept a small nightlight the first few times Lena stayed over because you only have the one very small window over your bed in the loft and you thought she might need the help to find her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night if she needed it. But after the second or third time you found it unplugged in the morning, you stopped leaving it on. If she doesn't need it or want it, you're not going to patronize her! On nights like tonight with heavy cloud cover and no outside ambient light to filter in, the darkness is smothering, haunting, and it's easy to pretend you've been buried alive and left alone to die in a tomb.

It’s usually pretty cool!

But you're not alone tonight, and normally where you’d _imagine_ there were monsters lurking beyond the darkness, there’s actually something there, something moving, something with ragged breath, something snuffling. Your adrenaline spikes, and you go into defensive mode, analyzing potential danger and the best way to neutralize it when you belatedly remember that Lena is here too, and the sound you hear is coming from her, from her sleeping spot on the floor a few feet away.

It takes a moment for you to realize that she’s crying.

“Lena?”

You sit up in alarm and reach to switch the light on, but she snaps, “ _Leave it off!”_ before you can even touch it, stunning you frozen.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Fine,” she says curtly, struggling to compose herself. “Bad dream.”

“Oh,” you say, letting some of the fight go out of you. Your pulse slows and your shoulders relax. “It's okay, whatever it was, it was just a dream. You're safe now.”

Lena makes a sound halfway between a scoff and an unhappy bark of laughter. “Right.” She sniffs again. “Go back to sleep, Webby.”

Of course you don't, because you couldn't in good conscience roll over and go back to sleep while your best friend is crying on the floor, so you pull back the covers and slide out of bed, carefully picking your way to her sleeping bag on your hands and knees. You can just make out the shape of her, black on black, sitting upright and sniffling into her pillow, and with some careful judgement you’re able to reach out and find her back with your hand. She freezes and tenses under your touch.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“That's okay.” It is, mostly, though you _do_ think it would be better if you turned on the light and talked about it. Instead you run your hand up and down her back, across her shoulders, and down the length of her arm to find her hand.

“Stop that,” she says, with absolutely zero conviction. She slumps against you, tilting her head against yours in a casual gesture of openness you know she wouldn't be caught dead doing if it were daylight and there were anyone around to see it.

“Sweet Lena,” you coo, trying to keep the small smile out of your voice because you don't want her to think you're making fun of her. She can be like this sometimes, a little bit tsundere, but _you_ know her secret, that she’s aloof and disinterested on the outside but warm and gooey on the inside, and it's a good secret to  have, it fills you with smugness and pride to know her better than anyone else, probably in the whole world. “Sweet beautiful Lena, I’ll protect you.”

You loop an arm around her shoulders and give her a squeeze. She tucks her bill into your hair and heaves a deep, exhausted sigh. You sit like this for a few moments, locked together in the dark silence, before you sense her working up the courage to speak.

When she does, her voice is small and weak and wet, so close and utterly defeated. “Why can't I have this. Why can't I just be normal.”

And you're so shaken! Lena is the paragon of coolness and confidence, she’s always so self-assured, what does she mean? This is not about a bad dream. You fumble for both her hands in the darkness and hold them between yours, you kiss her knuckles, press her palms over your heart. “You can! You are.”

“I can’t, and I'm not.” Her voice is dark and it frightens you, just a little, but you won't be swayed.

“You have me, and I like you just the way you are.”

Her hands close in the front of your nightgown and she pulls you close by it in a gesture that might seem threatening coming from anyone else, in any other situation; close enough you can feel her uneven breath on your face, hear her swallow in the darkness. After a beat or two, she touches the tip of her bill to yours, in what is not technically a kiss in the same way it would not be a kiss if she put her finger there to silence you, but the intent is clear and your heart is jettisoned into space for a moment anyway. You release her hands and find her face with your own, and it's as wet as her voice sounds, and you try to wipe it dry with your thumbs but you can't see anything at all so you end up just kind of pawing clumsily at her instead.

“Sorry,” you breathe, finding her hair and brushing it out of her face, tracing her eyebrows with your thumbs, pulling her down to kiss her forehead. You don't know what's possessing you to do these things, these gestures not of friendly comfort but of something else, something more intimate and secret, except that you've obviously always wanted to and now the darkness makes you brave in a way you've never needed to be before. You could face down the gorgon Medusa on the daily, but it's always been Lena’s cool gaze and casual disinterest that turns you to stone.

“ _I'm_ sorry,” she says, voice thick, on the verge of more tears, and you’re desperate to head that off at the pass.

“You didn't do anything,” you say, leaning forward and wrapping both arms around her. She sinks into you, hesitant, unsure, and relocates her grip from the front of your nightgown to the back, clinging to you like flotsam at sea.

“Not _yet_.”

It's an ominous thing to say, or will be in retrospect, later, but in the moment it doesn't mean anything to you, who thinks so highly of Lena you believe she could do nothing wrong. It doesn't occur to you that there might be something wrong with her, or that she might need help, or that you should tell someone that Lena cries in her sleep at night and responds to touch like she hasn't felt it in months, because you're a child and it wouldn’t be your job to think about these things even if you had the frame of reference to understand them. All you know is that your best friend is upset about something and that you want to make it right, and that she would never allow such blatant gestures of affection during waking hours, so this is your only opportunity to indulge in something secret you've been craving for probably a long time now.

“That's silly,” you say, and rest your bill on top of her head, rubbing calming circles on her back. “You’re being silly. I love you no matter what.”

When she starts to make a sound of protest, you pull back enough to touch your bills again in another not-kiss and shush her quiet. “I _said_ I love you _no matter what_.”

This is, of course, a pretty damning thing to say to a beautiful weeping girl in your arms under the cover of darkness in your bedroom, but it's true, whichever way she chooses to interpret it.

“You shouldn't,” she says, but only halfway, like it's something she thinks she needs to say but doesn't really want to. It ends not with a period, but an ellipses, or a _comma-but_ . _You shouldn't,comma, but I'm glad you do_ , maybe.

You’re trying to follow the potential threads of her unfinished thought when you realize how still the air has become. Lena is holding her breath, and you're about to ask if she's okay when the not-kiss ceases to be a not-kiss and becomes a _yes_ -kiss, too-clumsy and too-hard and too-awkward to be the stuff of your (admittedly vivid and elaborate) daydreams, but real just the same, real enough to spike your pulse and rock you back on your heels with a surprised and dizzy gasp.

You're still trying to process it when Lena is already frantically and sternly yell-whispering “Webby, that didn’t happen, _it didn't happen, promise me_ ,” and she sounds...not _mad_ , exactly, but urgent and _scared_ , and if you’d had a different kind of upbringing it might make you stop and wonder what things are like for Lena at home.

But you didn't, so you don't.

“‘Uhm,” you somehow manage to say, and she can make you promise all she wants but it definitely happened, _definitely_ , _she definitely kissed you_ !! and though it wasn't the soft, hazy, shoujo-sparkle experience you had hoped it would be, you think it _could be_ with enough practice, practice you'd be willing to start _right now_ if she wanted to.

“I mean it, Webby. You can’t...you can't say anything, to anyone, not even me. _Promise_.”

What a weird thing to say.

“I promise,” you say finally, even though you don't really want to, you want to tell _everyone_. It's important to Lena, though, so you promise. You promise not to bring it up, or talk about it, or expect it to happen again, but you can't promise not to think about it. And she’s still clinging to you, fists balled in your nightgown, faces so close you can feel her breath, so you think (hope?) maybe she doesn't really want to make you promise either.

“I shouldn't have done that,” she says. She still makes no move to let you go.

 _I’m glad you did,_ you don't say. _I’m glad you did and I want to do it again, when I’m expecting it_.

What you actually say is “Did what?”

Lena sighs and most of the panic and worry goes out of her. You wrap your arms around her neck, and she loosens her grip on your nightgown to hug you fully around the middle, and you stay that way for a long, long time, saying nothing more. You replay the moment a dozen times over in your mind, letting your imagination play what-if: what-if you'd kissed her back, what-if you'd kissed her first, what-if Lena had been practicing on stuffed animals too, would it have been a little more like your daydreams? What-if you could wake up tomorrow having had your first kiss with the prettiest, coolest girl you’ve ever known, and not have to pretend it never happened?

What-if she wasn't afraid?

You hold her, bill nuzzled against her neck, tracking the rhythm of her elevated heartbeat and the shallowness of her breath until both gradually slow and she eventually becomes heavy and slack in your arms.

You still don't let her go. You ease her down into her sleeping bag, but you go with her as you do, and as soon as your head touches her pillow beside hers, she curls into you with a sleepy murmur. Something in your chest swells hot and tears prick the corners of your eyes as you lie still in the darkness, arm draped over her, listening to Lena’s soft snores.

You hate whatever it is that puts fear and misery in her heart and makes her cry in the middle of the night, and when you find out what it is, you're going to destroy it, personally.

  
  


_You do, eventually, with help, but by then it's too late. By the time you have context for everything she said that night, the damage has been done. Everyone agrees that it's not your fault, there was nothing you could have done, but you'll never stop blaming yourself for not noticing, for not trying harder. You could have saved her, maybe, if only._

_There are no more sleepovers, because there's no more Lena, but it's weird how you never feel truly alone on nights with heavy cloud cover and no ambient light filtering through your single, small window. You've never needed a nightlight, and Lena never liked it, but you always dream there's one there anyway, soft and friendly and blue._


End file.
